


That Doesn't Make It Okay

by spaceleviathan



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Abortion, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 22:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceleviathan/pseuds/spaceleviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is getting symptoms for something unusual, but he’s ignoring it in favour of repressing any and all emotions he could ever possibly have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Doesn't Make It Okay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [swoopswoop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swoopswoop/gifts).



Charles didn’t notice when he started feeling ill a few weeks after Cuba. That was largely because he was in hospital at that point, and any change in his stomach was but a small annoyance compared to the loss of the lower half of his body.

—-

Charles did notice the weight gain, but that was something he was glad about, considering his time spent immobile and grieving had cut down his usual eating habits.

—-

When he started craving varying amounts of chocolate and chilli peppers - neither of which he was usually partial to - he figured that was down to mourning and stress. His body wanted endorphins to pick his mood up, and since exercise was out it’d have to make do with Hershey’s.

—-

He left the hospital seven weeks after he’d initially been injured, when the weight started to slowly come back. They’d kept him in because he had lost so much of his body mass in such a short amount of time.

He hated the wheelchair with every ounce of his significantly withered being, and hated the fact that it was permanent and not simply until he’d reached the hospital doors.

The children had been wonderful, of course, coming in every day to talk to him and read to him and, more recently, be taught by him. Even in his hospital bed, Charles wasn’t about to hinder the education of his students. Hank didn’t see him of course, because he was confined to the grounds of the mansion, but even if he hadn’t been he was much too clever for Charles’ lessons. He was cleverer than Charles, actually.

Hank sent news through the other two that he was working on rebuilding Cerebro, and that was all Charles needed to be reassured that the young, blue mutant was keeping himself sane by keeping himself busy.

—-

He came home to disaster. Why he thought he could leave three boys alone with a house without expecting a mess when he returned was a mystery.

He didn’t mind too much - the boys were boys and had attempted to straighten the mess they’d caused a little bit - but Charles still hired a maid that afternoon. One that cooked as well, because as far as Charles could tell the three young adults had stocked his fridge with noodles and tinned beans and not much else.

—-

Moira often dropped by when Charles was in the hospital, just to check up on him, and she also came round one afternoon shortly after Charles had been released.

She’d unfortunately timed her visit alongside a particularly bad day when Charles was attacked by his stomach all over again. He had been cursing his body when he’d felt her mind come up the driveway. He’d thought he’d been cleared by the hospital - surely these strange symptoms shouldn’t be persisting.

His pain had bubbled up into protectiveness for some obscure reason, and he’d forced himself to put the children before himself and Moira. He reasoned that Moira would understand. She wouldn’t like it, but she’d get it. And that was all he had to cling to regarding the morality of his actions. The boys came first. The sanctuary he was making for mutants with his ancestral house came first. Despite everything, even Erik and Raven took precedence. He’d protect all of it in an instant, so he did.

Perhaps on another occasion he’d have taken his pain and turned it into anger, but he couldn’t. He had children now, and they could never see his agony. They looked up to him, and he was going to do his damnedest to provide that shelter they needed.

—-

Just over thirteen weeks after the Cuba incident, Charles noticed he was developing a bit of a tummy.

That just about made his week, what with sudden, inexplicable aches and itches across his abdomen. On top of that, the sickness he’d been dealing with for months had only gotten worse, but he wasn’t about to complain. He wasn’t going to the hospital again for as long as he could help it.

He simply put a blanket over his stomach and forced himself to face the day.

—-

“Something’s wrong.” He told Hank a few weeks later, because there was only so much he was willing to take. He also knew he wasn’t eating enough for his stomach to look the way it was.

He showed it to Hank. With a crease to his brow and curiosity alight in his eyes, he led Charles into a more private part of his lab.

Well, at least someone was having fun.

—-

Charles was pregnant.

Hank said it like it was a medical marvel, which, admittedly, it was, and Charles echoed it like it was a particularly distasteful illness. Which, to a male who’d never thought about breeding in the first place, never mind becoming pregnant himself, it also was.

Charles wasn’t one for family. He’d not had a good experience of it himself. Of course he loved having the boys here and his memories of Raven would always be treasured, but there was a difference between adoptive family and genuine blood.

There was also a difference between having a fling with someone and having a child with them.

—-

Alex guessed the father of Charles’ unborn baby within seconds. There wasn’t a great deal of judgement surrounding the dual revelations that he was pregnant and gay, but Charles received an almighty glare regarding who he’d decided to sleep with.

Sean had shrugged it off, saying it was ‘a bummer’ that Erik had taken off like that.

They’d all admitted that since finding out they weren’t alone, it’d take a hell of a lot to surprise or phase the young mutants.

As far as they were concerned, Charles’ secondary mutation was just another wonder of evolving genetics.

Charles briefly entertained the thought that they’d all taken a sniff of Sean’s stash.

—-

Complications arose when Hank started looking a little more deeply into Charles’ more immediate concerns of, “How, pray tell, is it supposed to come out?”

Hank realised, after some thorough scans and significant puzzling, that his secondary mutation hadn’t really altered his body enough for him to maintain the child without putting severe strain on himself. It was why he was getting sicker, where, in a female pregnancy, the sickness would have abated after thirteen or so weeks.

“We could try a C-section,” Hank eventually concluded nervously, fidgeting with a pen. “If it gets to that.”

Charles tapped his fingers on his armrest and had long since accepted that mutations weren’t perfect, and that genetic accidents can happen.

—-

Charles crashed into a wall one day whilst trying to navigate his way down a hall. They found him fainted because the baby had taken all of his health for itself. Charles couldn’t blame it for it. A foetus can’t consciously decide what it will and won’t do.

It was looking out for itself. It was human nature.

The four of them then began to wonder how long it’d take until it sapped the very life out of him.

—-

Sean, Alex and Charles went into town one day to pick up some groceries and run a few errands for poor Hank who was stuck back at home.

Sean was doing a lot of the errands because Alex was hovering behind Charles worriedly, not letting him control the wheelchair at all in case he fainted again.

“You did a lot of damage to your legs,” He kept on insisting. “I know you can’t feel it, but that doesn’t make it okay.”

Charles saw a flash of red in his periphery, looked around, saw nothing. He concluded it was probably his mind melding with other people’s accidentally. Other people saw the strangest of things. He put his wall up a bit higher.

—-

He found himself in Hank’s now sterilised lab twenty weeks after Cuba.

Hank, asking him if he was sure, was very careful during the procedure.

Charles felt a bit guilty asking him to be a M.D when all Hank wanted to be was a Sc.D.

He also felt guilty asking Hank to do this when he knew Hank had reservations.

But he asked Hank anyway, because the fight to survive was innate within everyone, and Charles wasn’t going to give up his life just yet.

—-

It was just over four years later when Charles looked up from his book very suddenly, and rushed towards the front door.

In the hallway Sean was playing with Ororo and little Jean. Alex was, thankfully, off elsewhere in the house with Piotr, and Hank was squirrelled away, as usual, in his lab.

It was a good thing Alex was not here, because Erik was standing at the door, a blue, bare Raven shifting uneasily besides him.

“Good day.” He said, stiffly, mind in tune with Sean’s, to whom he’d given a telepathic heads-up. Sean had the girls gathered at his side, one hand holding each of theirs.

“Charles.” Erik said, straining to look around the door.

They’d met plenty of times since the debacle in Cuba, or at least Erik’s Brotherhood had met Charles’ X-Men. Charles, personally, had only seen Erik once or twice since the beach.

Erik spotted Jean and Ororo by Sean’s feet, and then looked to Charles wondrously.

“Is that-?” He asked, before cutting himself short. Charles graced him with a narrow-eyed look.

“What?” He asked suspiciously. “These are my newest students. Far too young to join your little team, I’d wager.” Erik was still staring at the children, Jean in particular. The redhead hid her face in Sean’s jeans.

“Oh.” Erik’s eyebrows clashed in the centre of his forehead. It, apparently, wasn’t the answer he was expecting. “Then where is our child?”

Charles drew himself back somewhat, looking to a bewildered Sean and then to a dejected Raven. And no, he wasn’t going to call her by her ridiculous codename. He was her brother and maintained rights to call her what he wished.

“Excuse me?” He spluttered, as Erik stepped into the house.

Mentally, Sean asked if they should call for Alex. Charles denied him, saying that he felt no hostilities from Raven. Erik, he couldn’t quite read, but then he’d never been able to tell with Erik anyway, silly helmet or no.

“Our child, Charles? I know you were pregnant. Azazel saw you.”

“I knew it.” Charles replied, mostly to himself, but it seemed to trigger something in Erik.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He snapped.

“How, precisely, was I supposed to?” Charles replied, because it was futile to deny it at this point. “You didn’t leave behind an address when you abandoned us on that island!”

Erik took the time to look remorseful. Charles took it to finally let off some steam.

“There is no child, Erik!” He yelled, and it froze the man in his tracks.

Raven looked particularly startled, and the revelation seemed to sink in for her a lot faster than it did Erik. He appeared to be having trouble connecting the dots.

His jaw opened uselessly just the once, before something shifted behind his eyes and Charles immediately called around the house for backup.

“What did you do?” Erik snarled, stalking towards Charles faster than he could wheel backwards, and it was only the sudden teamwork of Sean and Raven grabbing Erik simultaneously that likely saved the telepath’s neck.

“It was going to kill me, Erik.” He said as levelly as he could manage, because Erik’s face spoke of a grief far deeper than Charles had ever felt. Charles knew Erik inside and out and he’d known the metal bender had a gaping soft-spot for family. A yearning for it. But Erik had been the one to leave and Charles hadn’t known he’d come back. Charles had been too cold those years before, deliberately emotionally stunted just to save his sanity, for it to even leave any great lasting effect on him.

“You murdered it.” Erik stated, and over his shoulder Raven was pale. Sean just looked determined, righteously angry in a way Charles supposed should have been him. It had been _his_  life on the line, after all, and he didn’t have to justify his actions to the man who’d turned his back on him in the first place.

They could hear Alex storm through the kitchen door a few corridors down, yelling for Erik’s blood. Piotr was close behind. They could hear Hank’s heavy and swift footfalls from up above. The mutants were dangerous, protective and powerful, and they’d be there to back Charles up in less than a minute.

Raven urged herself and Erik to leave. Erik resisted.

“Was it a girl or a boy?” He demanded. Charles shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

“Charles!”

“I  _don’t know_!”

Hank was at the top of the stairs, and Alex had just slammed another door open. Raven tugged at the mutant with her not inconsiderable strength and Erik finally gave under the sheer force of the shapeshifter.

He had time for a parting shot before Alex chased him out of the house.

“I won’t forgive you, Charles.”

Charles wondered if Erik ever would have in the first place.

—-

“It was a boy.” Charles said many years later, when their differences still hadn’t been sorted out, but their tolerance towards each other had greatened. Their capacity to understand and sympathise and love had grown as time wore their coarser feelings down. Erik still hated humans, Charles still hated terrorism, but their anger towards each other had lessened.

In a way, they were friends again.

They were playing chess in the park. Nothing had really happened these last few years regarding mutants, especially not politically, so they both felt like they had a bit more time on their hands to spare. Charles was still trying to keep a balance of political activist and school headmaster, and Erik was still attempting to both save mutants and alienate them to his ideologies and frighten them into his cause, but they still had time for chess.

Erik didn’t look up upon his sudden pronouncement.

“I didn’t tell you because you were already upset.” Charles admitted. “It would have become more real had I told you.”

Erik nodded slowly after a time. He looked at Charles with a resigned expression on his slowly ageing face.

“I apologise for how I reacted.” He stated, an amazing step forward when Erik never admitted he had ever been in the wrong. Charles returned it with an admission he hadn’t let anyone but himself know. But Erik had the right. Erik had always had the right.

“I  _do_ regret it. I know everyone thinks I don’t, but I do. I swear, I do.”

Erik reached over and touched his hand, before gripping it tightly. “Then I forgive you.”

And that was all that they had ever needed to say.


End file.
